Good sir, don't believe what you "have heard". Go to Europe and sit down at a Michelin starred restaurant in Italy. Then you will learn what exceptional service means.
My wife and I spent most of 2019 traveling through Europe on a mix of backpacking and remote work, and while there was an adaptation period - American servers interact more with the customer, altho after Europe, it frequently feels pushy and overbearing - the service was, on average, pretty good. Much like in the US, there were places where the service was phenomenal, places where it was average, places where it sucked. There was no common denominator (again, exactly like the US).
This argument always feels weird to me, because most customer-facing jobs in the US aren’t tipped, and most of the people working in them still work hard and try to do a reasonably good job.
